with her fingers
in her ears, then pulled them out to cry--"Is it done? Is it over? Can
I come back?"

"Yes; it is all right. I've put him in my bag. You will appreciate him
better in his table guise. I'll take him back as a peace-offering to
Mrs McNab, for her own evening meal. We have already had our share at
the pic--"

Suddenly his hands fell to his sides, he straightened himself, and
turned his eyes upon her, filled with puzzle and dismay.

"The pic--"

"--Nic!" concluded Margot faintly. Rosy red were her cheeks; a weight
as of lead pressed on her eyelids, dragging them down, down, beneath his
gaze. "I--I--_forgot_! We were to have gone to find them! Do you
suppose they are--hiding still?"

He laughed at that, though in somewhat discomfited fashion.

"Rather not! Given us up long ago. It must be getting on for an hour.
I can't think how I came to forget--"

Margot glanced at him shyly beneath her curling lashes.

"It was the fish! A fisherman can't be expected to remember anything
when he is landing a trout!" she suggested soothingly. Nevertheless she
remembered with a thrill of joy that his forgetfulness had dated back to
a time when there had been no fish in prospect. "Do you suppose they
have gone home?"

"We will go and see. From that mound over there we can overlook the
path to the inn. Perhaps we had better keep a little in the background!
It would be as well that they should not see us, if they happened to
look up--"

If it were possible to feel a degree hotter, Margot felt it at that
moment, as she followed George Elgood up the little hillock to the
right, and, pausing just short of the top, peered stealthily around. A
simultaneous exclamation broke from both lips; simultaneously they drew
back, and crouched on their knees to peer over the heather.

There they went!--straggling in a row in the direction of the inn, the
party of revellers who had been so basely deserted.

First, the clergyman, with his hands clasped behind his back, his head
bent in thought; a pensive reveller, this, already beginning to repent a
heavy, indigestible meal; next, Mrs Macalister, holding her skirts in
characteristic fashion well up in front and sweeping the ground behind;
a pace or two in the rear, her spouse, showing depression and weariness
in every line of his body. Yet farther along the two young men carrying
the empty hampers; last of all, at quite a little distance from the
rest, the fi